Emily King Learns To Work With The Crickets Living In Her Floorboards

By Adam Deane

Photo by Bao Ngo

VANCOUVER – When Emily King transplanted herself from the hustle and bustle of city life to the quiet mountains of upstate New York, the successful 33-year-old recording artist and all around gentle individual found some magic inside herself. King decided to title this magic, Scenery. For the past year, she’s been living out every child-of-music’s dream and recording her second studio album in her backyard garage.

Rather than dealing with the preposterous demands of studio personalities, explosive egos and judgment all around, her main concern recording Scenery in the Catskills were the crickets living in the floorboards of her recording studio. BeatRoute found King in her element amidst her pre-tour preparations to talk to her about what stirs her creative spirit.

“Sometimes, you have to put on high heels, makeup, or wear a backpack around the house — you really have to trick yourself into being in the place you need to create. I find it really helps to have some sort of feelings to start off the whole recording process. The nice part about making Scenery was that I had all kinds of genuine feelings from all of the change happening from my move away from the city.”
Although donning makeup or heels doesn’t necessarily bring out everyone’s creative side, King assured us that will-power and believing that your work matters is a necessary precursor to success in a lot of ways.

“In a city you can walk around at night. You’re a weirdo if you do that up here (the Catskills). One of my favourite things is walking around the city at night,” she says. “You get out of your head, you’re physical, there is so much stimulation. Lyrics and feelings come from that. A lot of it is sitting down to do it and knowing not everything is going to be awesome.”

King’s lead single off of her upcoming release, “Remind Me,” happens to be one of the times she sat down and something awesome was the by-product. King’s squeaky clean staccato vocals lend the perfect complement to the warm, vintage, synthy vibes of the sound. You can’t argue with radio praise and her solid following in every city she frequents on tour. King has kept her fans waiting four years for the launch of Scenery, which only hints at the amount of mastery and care that has gone into this album. If King’s humble attitude is any indicator of her success it’s safe to say 2019 will be a good year for her and all of her hungry fans.